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posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 11 2017, @05:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the can-you-hear-me-now? dept.

Can you hear me now?

An astronaut wandering the moon next year could use a smartphone to call home. A German startup is preparing to set up the first telecommunication infrastructure on the lunar surface.

The German company Part Time Scientists, which originally competed for the Google Lunar X Prize race to the moon, plans to send a lander with a rover in late 2018 to visit the landing site of Apollo 17. (Launched in 1972, this was NASA's final Apollo mission to the moon.) Instead of using a complex dedicated telecommunication system to relay data from the rover to the Earth, the company will rely on LTE technology — the same system used on Earth for mobile phone communications.

"We are cooperating with Vodafone in order to provide LTE base stations on the moon," Karsten Becker, who heads embedded electronics development and integration for the startup, told Space.com.

Try to get free bandwidth on the Moon, I dare you.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @05:31PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @05:31PM (#552450)

    Try to get free bandwidth on the Moon, I dare you.

    I accept your dare.

    vodafone free internet tricks [ixquick.eu]

    Wow look at all those search results.

    Considering that I'm getting free bandwidth from Sprint at this very moment, and I know all the tricks, well ... you just made a very bad bet.

    Here's where I give you rope to mock me. Oh well sure it's only 96kbps theoretical maximum and I'm getting like 91kbps right now. Who cares if it's fucking free bandwidth from Sprint when it's slow as shit. I'm such a loser and I should feel bad for being a loser because I'm a loser. Hahaha lol fuck me.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @05:51PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @05:51PM (#552457)

    If you think it's slow now, just wait until you've got a 0.3s latency minimum for a packet to bounce to the moon and back.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @05:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @05:57PM (#552461)

      Oh goody 28kbps. I can still browse ASCII porn.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @06:00PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @06:00PM (#552464)

      More like 2.4 seconds round trip, when the moon is about 1.2 light seconds away from earth at perigee.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @06:10PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @06:10PM (#552472)

        That's what I get for doing sloppy math, thanks for correcting the record.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @07:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @07:00PM (#552501)

        Woo-hoo! 600 baud!

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 12 2017, @10:49AM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday August 12 2017, @10:49AM (#552822) Journal

        Yes, but park a fileserver on the Moon constantly beaming all songs and movies back to the Earth and see how the *AA's like them apples.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.